Probably more words have been written about the largemouth black bass than about any other fish, except, perhaps, the trout. It’s not because they are harder to make hit, or that they wage a tougher fight, or that they jump higher, or bore deeper, or shake their heads more than others. It’s because of two things—wherever an angler lives in the U.S.A., he can find them nearby; and wherever he finds them they are ready takers of lures. They are the fish kids cut their teeth on. They are the fish, even more than sunnies, that most anglers catch first.

While the largemouth goes by many different names, there’s never really any question as to who he is. He’s the same forthright guy everywhere, a buster with a great hunger, with eyes larger than his very big stomach. He has an appetite that will make him try to swallow anything from a mouse to a manatee. The hungrier he gets, the madder he gets, and when he’s mad he looks mad all over. His scales stick out, his fins beat violently,
his lower jaw juts out more than usual, and his eyes get as red as a mad bull’s. He bristles. He is full of a hot headed desire to knock the heck out of anything that goes by. So your popping bug, or other feathery fooler is near, and boy, oh boy, does he sock it!

The farther south the largemouth is found, the bigger he gets. Wherever he isn’t ice-bound, he feeds most of the year round and down in lower Georgia and Florida he is sitting at the dinner table all of the time. They grow big in Texas, too, and that state rightly boasts of the outsize hunks of bassy fish-flesh that swim its waters.